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Language Study: What is a foreign language worth?

economist.com

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Re: Language Study: What is a foreign language worth?

#31

Post by astrange »

contingencies wrote: post #12

I'm a native English speaker who learned Mandarin 10+ years ago, and I can honestly say it has not added a cent to my income as a programmer.

Do you work on projects that get Chinese localizations? It might help to work for a large or non-web company, so that you have a hope of selling into China instead of having a local company clone your product and sell theirs instead.

My Japanese and other language skills are very useful for QAing our app's localization, even though we have an unquestionably professional translation team to do it. In the end I understand the meaning of the app's text better than them, since I worked on the actual engineering.

Re: Language Study: What is a foreign language worth?

#32

Post by MarkTee »

sentenza wrote: post #22
nwenzel wrote: post #4

I realize the article is pro-multilingual, but I disagree with the notion that time spent learning a foreign language is time not spent learning another subject. My son was in Spanish immersion preschool from age 2 until 3 years 4 months. He can speak and understand Spanish and understands that he speaks a language that my wife and I don't. Then we moved and put him in Mandarin/English bilingual school. He's 2.5 mont…

I think the training you child recieves is an interesting combination and I don't want to criticize you on that. What I want to add are some observations I've made in the past about myself and others around me (so purely anecdotal). I speak three languages fluently and a bunch of others to varying degree. I also hold a PhD in Physics. What I've noticed is that my brain manages very well if I have prolonged periods of…

Polymaths like Da Vinci and Bacon disagree with you (however rare they may be).

Re: Language Study: What is a foreign language worth?

#33

Post by kleiba »

Being from Europe myself, I can't help but smile at this article. It's such an American way of thinking! "Return of investment in dollars", lol :-)

When I started learning foreign languages, English being one of them, it was because I was interested in different cultures and to be able to experience the world at large in a more sophisticated way. Never in a million years would it have occurred to me that I should do it to boost my career.

Re: Language Study: What is a foreign language worth?

#34

Post by bodyfour »

Vlaix wrote: post #29
tatqx wrote: post #2

Totally makes sense, but Spanish is still one of the easiest languages for learn for English speakers. So if you are planning to learn a new language, do give Spanish a try. One of the best books for learning Spanish is - Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish. French is a little more difficult, and German is way more difficult. Probably that's another reason for the difference in the returns over time?

Odd you'd say that. Though I'm not a native English speaker, I found Spanish to be among the hardest languages I've come across (more so than Modern Greek or German), and I come from a French background with wide knowledge across all of the Romance board. I'd expect a English speaker to struggle even more than I did. (The easiest language being English, due to exposure, extreme alienation by French a few centuries ba…

English has some good features:

  * Limited number of glyphs is a killer feature for the keyboard age
  * No noun genders to remember
  * The informal 2nd person ("thou") got chased out of common use centuries ago, along with its verb conjugations
  * Reasonably forgiving sentence structure
Its too bad the spelling and pronunciation are such disasters.

Re: Language Study: What is a foreign language worth?

#35

Post by sbmassey »

nerfhammer wrote: post #20
groovy2shoes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Spanish is pretty easy for Anglophones. Afrikaans is super easy for Anglophones to learn also. The syntax and pragmatics of Afrikaans are nearly the same as English. There are some new words, sounds, and orthography to pick up, but honestly the orthography is the hardest part. There aren't nearly as many resources to learn Afrikaans as Spanish, though. Edited to add: Most Afrikaans speakers will tell you that A…

also Afrikaans is the only other Indoeuropean language without noun genders!

Persian is also an Indo-European language with no noun genders: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_grammar

Re: Language Study: What is a foreign language worth?

#36

Post by gsz »

sentenza wrote: post #22
nwenzel wrote: post #4

I realize the article is pro-multilingual, but I disagree with the notion that time spent learning a foreign language is time not spent learning another subject. My son was in Spanish immersion preschool from age 2 until 3 years 4 months. He can speak and understand Spanish and understands that he speaks a language that my wife and I don't. Then we moved and put him in Mandarin/English bilingual school. He's 2.5 mont…

I think the training you child recieves is an interesting combination and I don't want to criticize you on that. What I want to add are some observations I've made in the past about myself and others around me (so purely anecdotal). I speak three languages fluently and a bunch of others to varying degree. I also hold a PhD in Physics. What I've noticed is that my brain manages very well if I have prolonged periods of…

I also speak three languages, and I'm learning another two. I'm also a hacker. I find programming and foreign languages highly complimentary. In both cases I'm supposed to communicate ideas in a specific vocabulary and grammar.

Also, my two geeky pre-teen sons equally like learning Python and French (on Duolingo).

Of course, I learn languages because I'm interested in the culture of the people who speak those languages. In the same way, I learn programming languages to broaden my way of thinking about computing.

Re: Language Study: What is a foreign language worth?

#37

Post by maurycy »

kleiba wrote: post #33

Being from Europe myself, I can't help but smile at this article. It's such an American way of thinking! "Return of investment in dollars", lol :-) When I started learning foreign languages, English being one of them, it was because I was interested in different cultures and to be able to experience the world at large in a more sophisticated way. Never in a million years would it have occurred to me that I should do…

Not to dismiss your experience, but The Economist actually is a British journal.

Re: Language Study: What is a foreign language worth?

#38

Post by bodyfour »

WildUtah wrote: post #18
tatqx wrote: post #2

Totally makes sense, but Spanish is still one of the easiest languages for learn for English speakers. So if you are planning to learn a new language, do give Spanish a try. One of the best books for learning Spanish is - Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish. French is a little more difficult, and German is way more difficult. Probably that's another reason for the difference in the returns over time?

Spanish has been destroying the dreams of Esperantists and others over the years who hope to build a more regular, orderly, and easy to learn common language based on common Indo-European roots. Turns out that it's dang hard to design anything easier or more accessible to speakers of any European language than Spanish already is. The spelling and pronunciation are already completely regular and predictable. The gramm…

Esperanto has two problems: Spanish and English. Spanish was what Esperanto wanted to be, English did what esperanto wanted to do.

Re: Language Study: What is a foreign language worth?

#39

Post by ronaldx »

contingencies wrote: post #12

I'm a native English speaker who learned Mandarin 10+ years ago, and I can honestly say it has not added a cent to my income as a programmer.

This is not immediately obvious, even if given your word.

Since you've listed Mandarin on your CV, you must recognise that it could have been a contributor to a hiring decision. Otherwise, why did you put it there?

Re: Language Study: What is a foreign language worth?

#40

Post by [deleted] »

maurycy wrote: post #37
kleiba wrote: post #33

Being from Europe myself, I can't help but smile at this article. It's such an American way of thinking! "Return of investment in dollars", lol :-) When I started learning foreign languages, English being one of them, it was because I was interested in different cultures and to be able to experience the world at large in a more sophisticated way. Never in a million years would it have occurred to me that I should do…

Not to dismiss your experience, but The Economist actually is a British journal.

[deleted]
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